Page 77 of The Broken Places

“The people who didn’t want their interviews aired? Sure. What’s up?”

“You told us no one else has or had access to the videos you didn’t post, right?”

“Correct. I can’t imagine how anyone would have access unless my Dropbox was hacked. But there’s never been any evidence of that.”

“Not even your cameraman?”

“Franco? No. There’s no need.”

“Can you tell me a little about him? Franco?”

“Sure. He’s a nice guy. Quiet but very dependable. Serious, does his job well. He’s generally in and out, not big on small talk. I hired him about five or six years ago, after my original cameraman moved out of town.”

Ambrose felt a small tremble move across his nerve endings, the same one he felt when he was hot on the heels of a criminal he’d been sent to hunt down. He knew he was close; he felt it. “What’s Franco’s last name?”

“Girone.” Jamal spelled it for him, and Ambrose nodded to Lennon, who had run into the living room, grabbed her laptop, and now had it open on the dresser.

“Can you tell me anything else about him?”

Jamal paused for a moment. “Let’s see. Franco’s mom was a big advocate for the homeless. She ran a program ... I can’t think of thename now. Tragically, she was murdered. I don’t know all the details. I think I learned about it from someone I interviewed, but I’d already heard her name. To this day, she’s often honored at events. When Franco applied to be my cameraman, he said he wanted to carry on in her tradition but he doesn’t have her outgoing personality. He prefers to stay in the shadows and help tell the stories of the Tenderloin streets from behind a lens.”

Ambrose thanked Jamal and hung up, then joined Lennon where she was bent over the screen of her laptop. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to a news article. “Zeta Girone was murdered in her home.” She picked up the laptop, turned, and climbed into bed, where she sat against the pillows. She propped the computer on her lap. Ambrose sat down on the edge of the bed and faced her. She took a minute to scan the article, obviously speed-reading. “Zeta Girone was the foster parent of four teens she’d taken in when they were relinquished to the system by clients of her foundation, Rays of Hope, located in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco.”

Rays of Hope.Where had he heard that name? Had he passed by it when he was in the Tenderloin? He must have. He waited as Lennon clicked for a few minutes.

“‘The goal of Rays of Hope is to abolish family homelessness in San Francisco. Until that time, we offer assistance with housing, financial, and addiction services,’” she said, obviously reading off the website she must have opened in another browser.

“So it’s still open?”

Lennon nodded, scanning the screen. “Okay, so Zeta Girone fostered these four teens who then murdered her in her home and were apparently collecting the checks she was getting for housing and caring for them. Before they killed her, however, they kept her confined in her own basement for almost a year.” Lennon shook her head. “Holy shit,” she muttered, scrolling down the screen. “She’d taken a hiatus from work to put all her effort into helping the teens readjust and catch up on their education, since they were so far behind and still experiencingeffects of their diagnosed posttraumatic stress disorder.” She glanced up at Ambrose and then back to the screen, pausing as she read for a few moments and then continued to summarize. “Instead, the teens tied her up, tortured, and taunted her for eleven and a half months, according to those familiar with the case. Eventually they stabbed her because the checks stopped coming, a consequence of unfiled necessary paperwork and missed home visits. Her body was found by her son, Franco, who was in college on the East Coast at the time of her captivity and eventual murder.” She looked up at Ambrose. “A chemistry major. Franco was a chemistry major.”

“Oh Christ.” He ran a finger under his lip. “Let me text Doc and see if Franco’s name rings a bell with him.” He grabbed his phone and shot Doc a quick text and then looked back to Lennon, who was still reading the screen.

“Money was tight, and so Franco worked summer and Christmas breaks to afford tuition,” she said. “Correspondence with his mother grew sparse, texts only answered with one or two words. He thought she was angry at him for going so far away. Apparently, they’d argued about it. When he arrived home, he discovered her mutilated corpse.”

Sickness swelled inside Ambrose. God, the heinous things humans were capable of.

Lennon turned the screen around, and Ambrose looked at the picture there, of a dark-haired boy and a woman with orangey-red hair. A mother with her arm around her son as they both smiled happily at the camera, a window behind them with a logo that had sunrays fanned out around it.Rays of Hope.His eyes moved to Franco. A good-looking kid, his smile close lipped but sincere. Was he the man collecting drug addicts and those living or working on the streets and triggering their trauma in horrific ways, encouraging them to bludgeon and stab each other to death?

“Do you think ... is he exacting revenge for his mother?” Lennon asked. “Getting even with those he considers irredeemable?” She paused.“God, she took them into her home, and they tortured and killed her. For a few thousand dollars. It’s sick.”

“If we’re right, so is what he’s doing.”

“I know. I know. It’s all sick.” Her shoulders rose and fell as she took in a breath. “I need to update Lieutenant Byrd about all of this.” He took the laptop from her and then watched as she called her boss, explaining what she’d found out about the podcast and Franco Girone. To his credit, the man didn’t waste time asking her how and when she’d done all the research and footwork that had gone into the discovery when she was supposed to be off duty. Instead, he took the information and said he’d put out an APB immediately.

Lennon hung up and looked at Ambrose. “If Franco knows chemistry, and is the man responsible for these crimes, he probably has some makeshift lab set up in his house. That’s the first place the police will go.” She looked to the side for a moment, obviously thinking. “So, if it’s him, we know how he targets his victims and has so much information about their triggers. But the thing that I don’t understand is how he might know about the pills. At the first scenes, the pills were the same recipe as Dr. Sweeton’s. Our killer’s obviously been experimenting since then, like we said. But initially, he started with those. How? How did he get one of those pills to use to produce more, if any extras are immediately destroyed?”

Ambrose ran his hand over his jaw, something occurring to him. “He doesn’t need a pill, though. Just the formula.”

“Right,” Lennon said, looking away and chewing at her lip. “In fact, that would make it easier than having to reverse engineer. So where might Dr. Sweeton keep that type of information?”

“He has all the files pertaining to Project Bluebird in his home office,” he said. “I’m positive that means the formula for the drug he uses too. His office is under lock and key, though. The man doesn’t even allow his housekeeper in there. I trust him, Lennon.”

“I know,” she said. “I do too. But what about his wife?”

“No. She doesn’t have a key either. We went over all this with him when the pills first showed up.”

“But even if he didn’t give a key to her, his wife could find a way into his office, right? If she really wanted to?”

---